From a comment by Infinite Force at http://asktheatheist.com/question/what_do_athiest_believe_about_the_origins_of_our_universe_and_life_on_our_planet: "I am an independent scientific researcher and I am a blood driven theist. I don't believe in no religions of this world and I don't have any religious documents to make me bias when I do scientific research. I have to say that you atheist are cowards to admit that you have a faith based belief system.
Faith - Belief in the un-seen (life spontaneously arising from non-living matter)
If you don't believe GOD created you than it's obvious you arose by un-intelligent causes. Chemical evolution has never been observed in this natural world and it is not science. This is only scientist assumptions. Since there is no evidence to prove that life spontaneously appeared on earth it takes ****faith**** to believe you spontaneously arose from non-living matter.
The atheism idea is based off of no logic, no evidence, or no reason. It’s just a title to hide behind to attack other people religions when In all reality you are religious your self.
You don’t have to believe in a god or gods to be considered a religion. Buddha don’t believe in god or gods and it’s a religion. All you need is an idea that you hold to be true with no evidence to back it up. You atheist have no proof that life spontaneously arose and to believe this is called faith. You atheist try and hide behind science but theist like me are not going to allow you to hide behind the origins of life because I‘m a scientific researcher that love doing what he does, and chemical evolution is not science it‘s only assumptions that have no kind of evidence to back it up. Atheism is identified as a religion!
Faith and religion is synonyms please refer to your thesaurus. I am religious because I do believe that there is an intelligent infinite force that created everything and the evidence I have to support this is observable in this natural world. That’s right, I have strong evidence to prove that life arose by intelligent causation and it’s called the Genetic code. I will post my evidence up after this post to prove that the origins of life started by intelligent causation. If you atheist don’t believe it takes faith to believe that life arose spontaneously without an intelligent cause I am asking for you to provide evidence to back it up. If you exercise Ad Hominem or dodge the question I am here to expose your religious concept to people in this forum. You have a faith based belief system and that’s a fact."

Atheist Answer:

If you're going to argue that abiogenesis is not science, it might help to define science first.

Science is the formulation of natural explanations for observable phenomena in the universe. Abiogenesis (the emergence of life from non-life), while not yet observed itself, is a natural explanation for the observable phenomenon of life. It is therefore a scientific hypothesis, and yes, it is science. What it is not (yet) is a theory.

Though some natural selection may have occurred in the process, abiogenesis should not be classified as chemical evolution. It may have been a rapid, non-cyclical process instead. We freely admit that we have no clue how it happened.

At least until we do observe a second abiogenesis in a lab or in nature (positing that the event which produced us was the first), not only do we stick to speculation as to how it happened, but we refrain from stating 100% certainty that it did happen. If evidence of intelligent design were to emerge (say, actual physical impressions of fingerprints in our DNA) we would soon abandon the hypothesis that we are the products of abiogenesis. We would then try to determine whether the designer was a god, an alien or an extinct Earth creature, and in all three cases start to hypothesise about the abiogenesis and evolution of that being, if any.

This is the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a faith position. We assume a scientific hypothesis for practical purposes as the best current explanation until a better one comes along, at which point we chop and change. We're not precious about it at all, at least until it accumulates enough evidence to be declared a theory. A man with a faith position defends it to the end, because he usually expects no contradictory (or even supporting) evidence to present itself.

Another difference is that a hypothesis must be falsifiable, which means there must be some hypothetical event which demonstrates it is false. Our abiogenesis is falsifiable because we might find firm evidence of a creator, like a signature or a work log billions of years old. By comparison, what would falsify the intelligent creation of life? Nothing. Even if we achieved abiogenesis in a lab, it might be the case that although abiogenesis is possible, we were still designed.

On the basis of this last point, I submit to you the idea that intelligent creation of life is a faith position where abiogenesis is not. There may be additional ways to establish this comparison, but I'll leave it at that for now.

I've seen the genetic code argument before, you know. The idea is that all codes are intelligently designed, so the existence of one in DNA proves a designer. That's an argument from ignorance because there is no evidence that a code is impossible without a designer. Further, if you present this argument, I can provide examples of naturally occurring codes which have nothing to do with life, like the means by which mineral crystals can transmit their structure to non-crystallised material.

There's another side to the genetic code argument which states that it's impossible for new information to appear naturally. We've been over that here.

I don't know if you've already been asked this question, but I'll ask it anyway...
What about all of the famous theist scientists and others who were/are clearly rational in every other respect? There have been numerous people (Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, etc.) who definately chose to be theists, rather than being a theist only because of blind belief. As very scientific, raitonal, and free-thinking people, they, on their own, came to the conclusion that there is a god of some sort. This would seem to contradict your claim that religion is inherantly irrational. I can't think of any reason why such peole would be theists unless its possible to be both rational and religious.
- SmartLX

Atheist Answer:

It is possible to be rational about some things and irrational about others, just as it's possible to be right about some things and wrong about others. We all do it; we think of a shirt as lucky, we play the lottery despite the expected outcome, we approach the beatiful woman who we know will knock us back. No human being is rational all of the time.

Religion often invites and allows irrationality by discouraging people from seeking evidence or questioning doctrine. Scientists and other such intellectually driven people might even relish the chance to relax their faculties now and again, and be swept up in the community of a shared belief.

It is also possible to be both rational and religious because being rational doesn't mean being right. Incorrect premises in people's reasoning can lead them, perfectly rationally, to an incorrect conclusion. The premises on which religions base their truth claims are incredibly hard to pin down.

Your examples of rational theists are not good examples. Franklin was a deist for much of his life, and even as an elderly Christian held "some Doubts as to [Jesus's] divinity". Einstein did not believe in a personal god, or anything which could contravene the laws of the universe. He effectively thought God WAS the laws of the universe, and this is to what he referred when he used the name. He was something like a pantheist, and basically said so: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all being." I encourage you to read up on Franklin, Einstein and Spinoza. They're fascinating people.

If atheists claim that they don't believe in anything, then why do they truly and faithfully believe that there is no God?

Atheist Answer:

Short answer is that they don't. Atheists generally leave open the possibility that there's some kind of god. It's just that they judge the probability of that to be so small that it can be dismissed. It's like living in Los Angeles knowing it could be destroyed by an earthquake any day; you can't say it'll never happen, but you take the overpass to work anyway.

Atheism is a-theism, the lack of a belief in gods. It's not a positive belief in the absence of gods. It's not a belief or a faith at all, simply a conclusion. The premises leading to that conclusion are roughly as follows:

- A god is an incredible, unprecendented, almost unimaingable being.

- To accept the existence of an incredible, unprecendented, almost unimaginable being would require strong, definite evidence of some type.

- No strong, definite evidence for any such incredible, unprecendented, almost unimaginable being is available.

There are all sorts of stoushes going on over what constitutes evidence, whether a priori arguments can be accepted in lieu of evidence and even whether we can decide this rationally at all without a god to provide logic, but it still boils down to these premises.

You're question is one of those questions that is generally on the "how to annoy an atheist" list of questions. Such questions are highly silly. Do you actually think we don't believe in anything? Don't you see how we can have beliefs about food preferences, clothing preferences, and entertainment preferences? And not have beliefs in gods?

There are literally hundreds of gods you don't believe in. I don't believe in those either. We are atheists in reference to all of those gods.

"I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” - Stephen Roberts

How do you handle crises if you don't believe in a higher power? What if you experience something paranormal, do you trust your eyesight? What if you are given a serious prognosis by a doctor and you prove him and other doctors wrong? What do you put it down to when strange things happen in your life and you can't explain them?
Are you an atheist because you really don't believe or are you simply angry at God for not giving you help in something you wanted?
Just curious.
Patti
Sydney, Australia